IN THE REVIEW

Groups, Gimmicks, and Instant Gurus

by William R. Coulson

The Pit

by Gene Church and Conrad D. Carnes

The banner of the second section of The New York Times on Thursday, March 26, 1970, read, American Churches Are Turning to Sensitivity Training, and in the article, the Rev. Gerald J. Judd, “director of Christian Education for the 2-million member United Church of Christ,” was quoted as saying, “It’s …

Piaf

by Simone Berteaut

Coco Chanel: Her Life, Her Secrets

by Marcel Haedrich, translated by Charles Lam Markmann

At a press conference when she first came to America in 1947, Edith Piaf was asked whom she most wanted to meet and she replied, “Einstein. And I’m counting on you to get me his phone number.” Her agent was understandably delighted with this piquant sally from his illustrious, unwashed, …

Kate Chopin, A Critical Biography

by Per Seyersted

The Complete Works of Kate Chopin

edited by Per Seyersted, Foreword by Edmund Wilson

Madame Ratignolle hoped that Robert would exercise extreme caution in dealing with the Mexicans, who, she considered, were a treacherous people, unscrupulous and revengeful. She trusted she did them no injustice in thus condemning them as a race. She had known personally but one Mexican, who made and sold excellent …

A White House Diary

by Lady Bird Johnson

A Woman of Quality: Eleanor Roosevelt

by Stella K. Hershan

Lady Bird Johnson’s primary reason for keeping a diary for more than five years was that, as she says in her prefatory note, she wanted her descendants to share through her eyes her “unique position, as wife of the president of the United States.” But the exercise was disciplinary as …

The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh

with an Introduction by William Jovanovich

“Wednesday and Thursday, April 1 and 2 (1942). Up at 4:30. Left in Mercury at 5:00. Crossed on 5:45 ferry. Took U.S. Route 6 through Providence and Hartford, and crossed the Hudson, via Bear Mountain Bridge. Stopped only for gasoline and sandwiches, which I ate, driving, during the day. Took …

Only One Year

by Svetlana Alliluyeva, translated by Paul Chavchvadze

“Oh, those ever-changing moods of Moscow! How swiftly they go from black to white, from one extreme to another, from friendship to accusations, from adoration to hatred, from the permissive ‘da’ to that annihilating ‘nyet.’ Those eternal swings from a thaw to a freeze, whims that disregard their own rules, …